Rodney

I am a student teacher of first- and second-graders, and one of the hardest things to deal with is the blame game -- "He hit me," "No, she shoved me, so I shoved too," and so on -- in part because you can never straighten it out, and in part because it just soaks your time up endlessly.

The teacher I work with doesn't get into the middle unless somebody is obviously hurt or obviously guilty; 98 percent of the time the problem is simply that kids don't know how to cope with their feelings very well. So she sends them outside the door to work it out, and tells them to come back in when they've finished. Generally what happens (I've listened) is that each kid repeats a litany of complaints to the other one, and one or both finds one thing to apologize for. Once that magic words are spoken -- I'm sorry, It's okay -- the storm is over as if it had never been. I've been meaning to ask if or how she trained them to do this, but in the meantime the point is to try to teach _them_ to handle it.

With two teachers in class, of course, children like to play the "I'll ask a different parent" card, just as they do at home, to see if they can get a better deal. Since the two of us are generally in the room at the same time, I always ask the kids if they asked the other teacher first. If they say yes, I tell them to do what she said. If they say no, I make a judgment call based on rules that the other teacher and I have worked out together (parents should do, this, too). Of course, later I also check with the other teacher. If it turns out that a lie has been told, there must be consequences. Over the months that I've been there, nearly all the students have learned to stop trying this tactic, although there's always a diehard.